Sunday, February 27, 2011

I was unable to listen to, or watch any of this game last night, so this recap is going to be very, very short.The Lincoln Stars had their three-game winning streak snapped Saturday night by the Fargo Force, losing big late in the game by a score of 6-3. Click here to view the Pointstreak boxscore. The Stars had a 2-1 lead going into the third period, but fell apart in the last twenty minutes as the Force outscored Lincoln 5-1 in the third to win the game 6-3. With the loss the Stars dropped to 22-17-4 (48 points), and are still in fifth place in the USHL Western Conference.Stars forward Austin Hervey continued his hot streak early on in this game with a goal at the 10:54 mark of the first period to give Lincoln the 1-0 lead. Eric Scheid and Jared Hanson collected the assists on Hervey's third goal in his last four games. The Force would respond five minutes after the Stars goal when Fargo forward Jimmy Mullin scored to even the game up at 1-1 going into the first intermission.In the second period, Stars forward John McCarron scored at the 11:57 mark to give Lincoln its second lead of the game, this time at 2-1. Rasmus Juell and Garrett Peterson earned the assists on McCarron's 14th goal of the season. Unfortunately for the Stars, it would be the last time they would have the lead in the game.In the third period, it was all Fargo as the Force scored four unanswered goals in the period, and five overall, to cruise to the victory. Force had goals from Jimmy Mullin, Nate Arentz, Nick Oliver, and Austin Farley to start the third before Stars forward Garrett Peterson scored at the 15:58 mark to interrupt the Fargo scoring barrage. Rasmus Juell earned the lone assist on Petey's 17th goal of the season. The Force would add one more goal with less than a minute remaining to complete the scoring. Fargo outshot the Stars 32-26, while both teams went scoreless on the powerplay (Lincoln 0-for-4, Fargo 0-for-3). Stars goaltender Kevin Murdock stopped 26 of 32 shots on net in the loss. I really hope to hear from some of the blog readers out there who listened to the game on the radio, or may have watched the game on B2. I'm in the dark since I wasn't able to follow the game at all, so I have no idea what happened in that third period. Ugly, ugly period. We haven't seen anything like that from the Stars since November or October of last year. Lets hope the players can put it behind them and get back to winning hockey games with their matchup against the Sioux Falls Stampede tonight. Puck drops at 6:05pm tonight, and we will be doing a live chat during the game. In a odd scheduling quirk, the next three games the Stars will play will all be against the Sioux Falls Stampede. Sunday night in Sioux Falls, Wednesday night in Sioux Falls, and then Friday night at the IceBox. The Stampede are seven points ahead of the Stars in the standings, so this would be a great opportunity for Lincoln to roll off three straight wins and climb up closer to fourth or third place in the western conference.Go Stars.